Back to Western Australia

Sadly on the 19th of May 2005 my pop passed away in Carnarvon. After speaking with my mother I was informed not to travel back for the funeral as it was too far to come and too expensive and they would be thinking about me. As soon as I had gotten off the phone I had immediately decided to travel back and started shuffling meetings and training days so I could travel back on the 21st of May, No-one knowing except my brother. After two flights and a 5 hour drive I surprised my mum and nana on Tuesday the 24th, much to their delight. Nothing was going to stop my visit to see my pop for the last time and to say my goodbyes.
Whilst I was in Carnarvon, I decided to travel to the "Blowholes" to inspect the beach shack, have a day in the sun and to remember the good times we all had growing up there with pop. I even had some fresh oysters in memory of my pop and his love for the ocean and seafood.
The following photos are of the shack and surrounding coastal areas.

Rugged coastline !

Blowhole in action again.

A small water blast from the blowhole.

The Oyster Bed.

View of the island and marine reserve.

The Lighthouse overlooks the Blowholes.

The oyster bed from Granny's rock.

Granny's rock !

Plenty of fish with crystal clear water.

Looking towards the Boat Ramp and Island.

Looking towards the surf beach with Black Rock in the background.

Our shack from the beach.

The shack with the brown long drop !

Tauranga Power Boat Racing

New Zealand Power Boat Racing competition held its last round in the Tauranga Harbour on the 14th of May 2005, this competition involves boats of all sizes racing together in separate classes. Graeme and Pam both know the brothers that drive "Jessie James" a 31ft twin V8 boat that puts out 1300HP, and because of this we were invited to be a marshall for the day which involved sitting in Graeme's boat on the racing line. After the brief of the events to come, we were sent out on the water to marshall between two points, which included stopping boats from crossing the racing line, helping boats in distress and general lookout. As the race started, we were more concerned about stopping boats crossing the racing line as we had the Harbour entrance, little did we know that in the second lap a boat called "Broomstick" a sleek black 6m outboard powered boat proved us wrong by getting some air right in front of us, clipping the next chop and nose diving into the third piece of chop. So here we were keeping an eye on it as it started to fill up with water in great volumes, a quick distress wave from the crew and we were next to the sinking boat and the two occupants in no time. I was stationed at the back of the boat, after making the initial call to race control, trying to help the driver out of the water, who happened to be female. After giving the rope she had to Kevin, who was looking after the sinking boat, I realized the rope was still tangled around her arm and neck, after quickly releasing the rope from around her neck, I helped the driver into the boat. The driver had a bleeding nose from head butting the dashboard and the passenger was okay. Meanwhile, Pam and Robin were hiding in the front of the boat out of the way. Within seconds of getting the crew into the boat we had a two helicopters, the coast guard and a 10m launch surrounding us. We then gave the semi sunken boat to the launch who towed it in and we took the crew back to shore, before returning to our marshalling area. After the rescue, the race finished about an hour later with no other real incidents, except for a boat nearly hitting us. About three other boats sank in the race from similar events but not within our area. The winner of the top class was "Jessie James" but missed out by a few points to take the championship from the "Placemakers" boat. A bbq and plenty of drinks finished the eventful day off. I was a little busy to take photos of the sinking "Broomstick" but got a few snaps of the other racing boats.

Jessie James, the winner of the Tauranga Power Boat Race 2005 cruises past the harbour entrance.

The smaller category boats go just as hard as the bigger ones. Check out the air under the boat on the right.

One of the many Helicopters on the day.

Placemakers trying to catch Jessie James out in front.

Jessie James racing in front of the Mount.

TNT, an inboard V8 boat.

Jessie James' mini-me boat used for cruising around the Harbour.

Black Water Rafting

On the weekend of the 7th and 8th of May I traveled from Tauranga to Waitomo to do Black Water Rafting (BWR) with six YP's from Auckland (www.blackwaterrafting.co.nz). Now BWR contains a variety of adventures, we completed the Black Abyss adventure, this starts with getting suited up with wetsuit, booties, harness, and a helmet(light attached). We then jumped into a van for a 5 min car journey to the entrance, once there we practiced abseiling down a bank to get the feel of it before jumping into the hole. The Abseil is about a 40m drop with the first part of the abseil seated until you get inside the cave entrance (which is fairly small and squishy), once inside the cave it is completely dark except for the light on your helmet, after spinning around so that I could face the wall I proceeded to jump down the face. Not knowing where the bottom was a really adrenaline pumping experience. So once down we walked for a bit along a grate like walkway which was located over a deep hole in the cave. At the end of the walkway was a Flying Fox, which we were sent down with no lights on at all, not knowing where you were going or what you were going to hit was really cool feeling which got the adrenaline pumping again. After a small break with hot coffee we jumped off a ledge with our tyre tubes into icy cold water and paddled up stream. After a while we turned around, turned the lights off and followed the millions of glow worms on the cave roof. Really beautiful, completely dark except for the electric blue glow worms and perfect silence. Once we got back to the ledge we lost the tubes and proceeded by foot which entailed a water slide, a rock climbing challenge and numerous small caves which were small and cozy to say the least. Towards the end we got a choice to walk out or climb out, so the climb out involved us climbing up two small water falls, unharnessed. Really good feeling of adventure and as we finished early we got to go for another small caving adventure which was really tight... After the BWR caving adventure we headed for our accommodation and proceeded to get pissed until the early hours of the morning. Really great weekend with plenty of action in and out of the caves...Highly recommended.

Black Water Rafting Team from left to right: Mark, Me, Gavin, David, Bryan, Suzanne and Dean all suited up ready for action.

Bryan and me getting suited ready for the adventure!

Fishing in Tauranga

Over the past couple of weekends I have been getting up early....for a Saturday and heading off fishing with Graeme and his boat Angelique. Both weekends we have come back with 15 to 18 snapper, at least a couple of trevally and a couple of New Zealand's own brand of fish a kahawai and a John Dory. Now I was told that when you catch a John Dory, there is always a dory-story that goes with it...
My particular dory-story goes like this : I pulled up a small cod about 100mm and Graeme told me to throw it over with the hooks through it back and fish for a John Dory. Now never having seen or heard of a dory before i thought why not and fished for a dory for about half an hour or so, whilst continuing to fish for snapper on my other rod....no dory so graeme told me to pack that rod and continue fishing. Whilst pulling up my um-teenth small snapper i thought geez this one small...or so i thought as the rod just got heavy from that point on. Thinking I had a occy or maybe an old boot and as i pulled it to the surface i discovered i had a snapper about 100mm long inside this mouth, which was actually attached to a fish...A John Dory...
And thats my John Dory Story . . . So whilst the weather has been great, Graeme and I have been enjoying it in the boat.

The John Dory I caught on Angelique.